Concerning beans, breasts and bull

You can’t milk an almond.

Or a soybean.

Kudos to the Trump administration’s team of crack bio-scientists for this momentous observation. Yup, just a couple weeks ago FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb breathlessly announced that his agency had determined that milk is a substance produced by lactating mammals “and an almond doesn't lactate.”

Consequently the very idea of almond milk, or soy milk is ‘udderly’ ridiculous.

OK, had to get that out of the way…

Meanwhile, California is burning, the oceans are rising, and, on Election Day, the Russians are coming…

So it’s good to know that the government has determined that milk comes from a cow.

Jeepers, I could have told them that – better than 60 years ago – but I suppose they needed to take their time to be sure they got the facts straight.

Yup, way back when I was a diaper-wearin’, bottle-suckin’ toddlin’ tyke, Dad headed down to the barn morning and night to put the squeeze on a double line of stanchioned Holsteins. That milk went from cow to can to cooler to creamery and then to parts, places and purposes unknown. That was back when pretty much everybody know what the word “milk” referred to … well before an American president called into question what” the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

But words are funny things. That toddler playing in the cow pies knew what cows were and knew what soybeans were – and if someone had thought to pose the question, he doubtless would have averred quite passionately that nobody could get milk from a bean any more than they could get blood from a turnip.

Well then, what might that be in all those cartons cooling in the grocers’ refrigerated case? It’s white, runny and folks pour it over their corn flakes in the morning. It looks like, sorta tastes like, well, y’know – milk

But should we oughta call it that?

Not surprisingly, the dairy cow caucus says no. Calling an exotic extract of nuts, legumes and other immobile, photosynthesizing life forms “milk” is so much bull. They argue the only way to turn a soybean into milk is to run it through a cow.

Point well taken; with the caveat that the proponents of said point of view have many, many billions invested in the production, modification and distribution of mammalian milk.

And save for folks for whom consumption of naturally occurring dairy products results in the urps, squirts or worse, I don’t really see the need for milk, cheese and other goodies born in a lab rather than out in the pasture. Mother Nature gives good milk – we ought to be promoting it over the manufactured stuff.

Kudos to the Trump administration for doing just that – at least for the cows and the dairy lobby.

Babies – particularly Third World babies – don’t do nearly so well.

Less than two weeks before Mr. Gottlieb informed us where real milk comes from, the United States demanded that language calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and to restrict “inaccurate or misleading marketing for breast milk substitutes” be removed from a resolution before the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, a stance strongly supported by manufacturers of infant formula.

Now in a way similar to gravity, evolution, and climate change, the science is settled in support of the position that mother’s milk is the best possible food for human infants and that mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed their babies whenever possible.

Unless, of course, there’s a buck to be made and a political contribution to be garnered.

And that might have something to do with California burning, the oceans rising, and, on Election Day, the Russians coming.

Y’ think?